Once An Apostle Of Loeb, Always . . .

Joe McQuaid dropped in the other day to remind me that he had saved my life, and so I took him to lunch.

McQuaid, 38, is the editor-in-chief of The Manchester Union Leader in New Hampshire, and he and I cheated death together in Beirut a few years ago.

Sometimes he claims to have saved my life by pulling me from beneath the treads of a Syrian tank. And sometimes he says he threw himself on a live PLO grenade and told me to run for it.

Actually, what he did was take a look at a sandwich I had bought from a street vendor in East Beirut and say: ``I wouldn`t eat that if I were you. It`s still moving.``

And so I owe my life to him. I also like him. Which is funny because politically we agree on almost nothing. His newspaper is one of the most conservative in America. It is also, uh, unique.

When The Union Leader doesn`t like people, it lets them know. For example, right before the Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter election in 1976, the paper ran the headline, all in capital letters, ``STUPID VS. SHIFTY.`` When Carter won, it ran, ``SHIFTY BEATS STUPID.``

The owner and publisher of the paper was William Loeb, a small, bullet-shaped guy who liked to say terrible things about people in print and then laugh like hell.

On the day Ted Kennedy announced for the presidency in 1979, for instance, he flew to Manchester where he was greeted by the headline,

``KENNEDY`S WATERPROOF WATCHES FOR SECRETARIES.``

Loeb didn`t believe in halfway measures.

``I grew up in the shadow of the White House,`` Loeb once told me.

``Theodore Roosevelt was my godfather. I`ve seen so many men strut across the stage. They`re all so serious. Don`t they understand how tiny an eyelash of time they occupy? My God, how much of it matters?``

Loeb, by the way, carried a Charter Arms .38 pistol under his coat at all times. And his wife, Nackey, carried one in her purse. ``One never,`` she assured me, ``fires in anger.``

The Union Leader might be dismissed as just another example of American exotica except that it is the largest newspaper in a state that is critical to presidential contenders.

And it keeps on punching. After Loeb died, Nackey took over as publisher and ran headlines like, ``JESSE JACKSON: THE COMMUNISTS` TOOL.``

If you get the impression The Union Leader doesn`t much like Democrats, you are right. McQuaid, who took over the editorship from his father, ran a headline in 1984 that referred to all the Democratic contenders as, ``Nitwits from Never-Never Land.`` He didn`t use all capital letters though, so he figured that was pretty mild.

I had not seen him in a few years and I feared he was going respectable on me. He appears on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour now and is supposed to represent the sane Right, which means he doesn`t like Lyndon LaRouche and his nutballs.

But I knew McQuaid hadn`t changed when I asked him what was on the public mind up in New Hampshire. ``Well, the Chernobyl thing,`` he said. ``It`s too bad.``

Yes, I said, a tragedy. And I know nuclear power is very controversial up your way. He looked at me as if I were bonkers. ``I`m talking about the bumper stickers,`` he said. ``That`s what I`m upset about.``

The bumper stickers? ``Yeah, we had these bumper stickers that said `More People Have Died in Teddy Kennedy`s Car Than In Nuclear Accidents` and now we have to change them.

``What we could do though,`` he said, brightening, ``is change them to say American nuclear accidents.``

The Union Leader was in the news recently because George Bush, whom Loeb once had called an ``incompetent liberal masquerading as a conservative,`` was wooing the paper.

A dinner was given to honor the memory of Loeb last December in Washington, and while Ronald Reagan was invited to be the guest speaker, he sent Bush instead.

And Bush courted the heck out of the right-wing crowd, saying all the things they wanted to hear. So I asked McQuaid if it had worked, if the Union Leader was going to endorse Bush for the presidency in 1988.

``Well, it`s really too early to tell,`` he said.

Aww, c`mon I said. We`ve been through hell together. Give me a hint.

``No, no,`` he said. ``It is Mrs. Loeb`s decision, not mine, and she says it`s too early to decide.``

Well, can I say he is a likely choice? ``No!`` he said.

Why not? I asked. ``Because George Bush is a wimp, that`s why!`` he said. Bill Loeb would have been proud.